


windfall

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Tooth Rotting Fluff, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>happy "johnkat day"?</p>
            </blockquote>





	windfall

Sometimes, when he’s legitimately angry, Karkat is so tense that he shudders in your arms like a steel girder.  When he relaxes, it’s like seeing a building demolished; the lines of his back sag, he leans into you for structural support, and he is jittery with the aftershock.  In times like those, you walk around the block together until he stops holding your hand in a death grip and starts holding your hand in a boyfriend grip.

It takes a while.  You don’t mind.  Karkat is a being of constant freakout.  Extremity is his MO.  The things that make Karkat furious are always gravely important; you’d worry if he were suddenly apathetic.

Events that induce that level of stress, and which you have learned to notice in advance, include: atrocities on the news.  Unforgivable sins.  Full-scale existential crises.

Some other times he is tense in a peculiar, nervous way.  He wrings his hands together, chews on his claws, runs his fingers through his hair until it resembles a black haystack perched atop his skull.  The tension coils in his shoulders, hunching him over and making him smaller.   The world is just too big, and there is too much noise and color in it. 

He talks faster, sometimes wholly incoherent.  You do your best to listen, piece out the meaning in the word vomit, and sift the facts from the noise.

You find it best, in those scenarios, to let him talk it out.  Let the dam break and let him speak himself hoarse.  His voice becomes a raw and painful thing, shot through with anxiety and fear, and although he isn’t saying what he means, the emotional subtext rings like a klaxon. 

You have a deep and irrational hatred for the things that make Karkat afraid.

(Nightmares.  His career.  Losing track of his friends, losing track of his culture, losing track of himself.  He frets, wearing his nerves thin, until the problem is fixed or a compromise reached.  His insomnia makes you plurally miserable.)

And then there is another kind of tension altogether.

This is a wordless thing, the way you see quiet thoughts tighten like nooses in his head.  He’ll be thinking so loud it keeps you awake, lying in bed next to him, and you can’t help pulling him closer.  You have to try to smooth the furrows from his brow with kisses. 

It’s kind of miraculous how often that works.  You’re very lucky that way.

And you think it’s best, in those situations, to keep kissing him until he feels better.  Until he relaxes, murmurs quietly into your ears; makes his odd purring sounds, the texture of his skin ever-so-slightly different from yours as you stroke it.  You peck kisses down his nose, press your lips against his eyelids, meandering everywhere until you kiss him proper on the lips.  It makes him laugh, how you fuss - he tells you to cut it out, but he tilts his chin and kisses you back.

This is the loveliest way he relaxes: in your hands, to soft touches and quiet words, words he absorbs without resistance.  You tell him you love him.  You tell him he’s amazing, and you tell him you want him to feel amazing.  You tell him you can’t even imagine getting sick of this.

Because it’s true.  It’s not like binging on cupcake frosting and getting sick of it, it’s not as mundane as an appetite. Karkat is something far more fundamental.  Like oxygen and nitrogen - not the most abundant elements, but the most vital to you.

He tells you, eyes wide and glassy, tracing over your chest with his fingertips: your blood moves faster when you touch him.

You tell him he breathes different.

And you wrap an arm around his waist, and demonstrate.

You savor the way the air moves through the soft flutes of his throat.  The way it pitches low, and gentle, regardless of the content of his speech - he could be telling you to go take a flying fuck at the sun, but this is the voice that means he really, really loves you. 

He is so sweetly overwhelmed.

You slide your fingers into him. 

His whole body shudders - trembling and electric.

This variety of his tension is beautiful the way taut stringed instruments are beautiful, the way he reverberates like a note in the air.  It races silently through his limbs, and you press your chin into the hollow of his shoulder, watch the shivers run.  He breathes staccato.  His torso shakes.  And you can feel it, too, when he convulses around your fingers.  He’s easily embarrassed, eyes shut tight as he gasps, hands fisted into the sheets - he doesn’t understand how he makes you breathless.

You try to pour your feelings out through your hands; your heart pounds, your blood flies through your body, excess warmth rising through your flesh and sinking into his skin.  You hope he feels good down to his marrow.  Every tendon, every ligament, every joint.  Every cell.  Every atom. 

He is your favorite instrument.  (He’s your favorite everything.)

As long as he shudders, as long as he squirms and sobs; as long as he jolts back against you like it’s too much, but still lets you touch him, still whimpers your name like he’s calling for help; as long as he’s safe in your arms, you are blissful.  If it were feasible, you would do this forever. 

(He’s not nearly big enough to contain how much he cares, and it is terribly unfair. His heart buckles under the weight.  You want to shoulder it, for a while.  You want to let him breathe.)

When the tension snaps, you hold him gently, and help him unwind.  You pull your fingers out; gently wrap them around his bulge, and hold him until the shaking stops.

You wish he could stay soft and tender forever.  You wish the world were better; you wish it didn’t twist him into knots, or pummel the bruised segments of his soul.

But you have simple things.  You can make him smile, and you can make him laugh; and you can give him this. 

So you kiss him good night.  You hold his body to your beating heart, you listen to him breathe in sleep; and you hope it’s enough.

* * *

(A surfeit, Karkat says, when you ask him if he’s happy.) 

(It means: far, far more than enough.)

**Author's Note:**

> i will work on my other WIPs when i am capable of concentrating for more than an hour at a stretch


End file.
